Gerbils

I have a very picky snake and she just eat gerbils and honestly is very hard to find them As feeders cuz the regular market sell them as a pet. So if you guy can advice what to do I where to go. I live on broward, Florida


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Go to a small family pet store who sells gerbils, explain you have a problem where your snake only feeds on gerbils. Ask them for there distributor!

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If you decide to breed gerbils, know that they breed in monogamous pairs, so you should only put 1 male and 1 female together at a time. They also only have a few babies at one time, and not often either.


Have you tried taking a mouse and rubbing gerbil bedding on it? Have you tried ASFs?

Yes I have but it doesn't work and the ASFs are even harder to find where a live


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Well I know ASFs exist in North Carolina I believe, but further down than that, I do not know. I feel like there should be a lot of breeders in FL, since there's a lot of hungry reptiles there.

If worst comes to worse, you can order live ASFs to be shipped to you to start a colony. But I think you should be able to find them close enough to just drive. You can try looking at mouse groups on FB. Asking there should help.

I don't know how many things you've tried to get her to switch, but if you haven't exhausted all possibilities, I'd focus there first. Gerbils just aren't the best food source. Probably fine nutritionally (altho I really don't know one way or the other), but they tend to be hard to find, expensive, and not easy to breed on your own.

You could try putting a post on craigslist to see if you can find any local breeders that way.

Gerbils actually produce a litter monthly and, presuming you have a male/female in proper housing with decent diet, they breed fairly regularly.
However, everyone else's comments hold true... try to transition over, and if not hit Craigslist and the mom/pop pet store idea. :x sorry about your picky snake.

Gerbils are a great feeder when you have only one snake that eats them. Breeding them on a semi small scale is pretty easy, and they smell the LEAST of all rodents.

I used to use 10 gallon tanks to house one breeding pair and then separate the babies at around five weeks. Separate the weaned gerbils by sex and if you have animals that are less than eight weeks of age you can usually house them together without any fighting.

Adult gerbils will often fight severely when introduced. This is why it is best to introduce pairs at a young age.

Leave the male and female together all the time. The male will not harm the babies. He will rebreed the female right after she gives birth.

I used a good high quality pine shaving for substrate.

If I were to do it over again I would probably try to use the half height ten gallon tanks and construct a top for it like the top of a lab cage where there is a food hopper and a place to plug in a waterer.

Tanks should be cleaned every seven days.

Other than that, there's not that much to it. We used to use the old mixed feed with the sunflower seeds, hard cord, bird seed and other crap in it. I would imagine that there is probably a very good lab block for gerbils now.

I would absolutely recommend breeding them for yourself. I started breeding them for a picky ball python I had over 20 years ago. It was probably an imported animal.

As others suggested you could try breeding African Soft Furs as they are more prolific, but Gerbils are much friendlier and easier to work with. They also come in a variety of cool colors and patterns. My favorite was always the cinnamon canadian white spot. Breeding a grey male over an agouti female often produced cinnamon for me.

Good luck with whichever direction you want to go in.